Movies Filmed Elsewhere Than Where They're Supposed to Be and Gone Comically Wrong

Rather than hijack this thread about movies filmed in places you've lived, how about the opposite? Movies filmed elsewhere but that are supposed to be where you live, or at least a place you are very familiar with, but they've screwed it up comically?

In The Buddy Holly Story (1978), through the window of the Lubbock, Texas, bus station can be seen a nice mountain. I'm here to tell ya: Lubbock is flat as a tabletop, and there ain't no mountain around for hundreds of miles.

Similarly, in Happy, Texas (1999), there's a scene where two of the main characters are sitting on a porch taking in the breathtaking scenery in front of them. Bull-fucking-shit! I am more familiar with the real Happy, Texas, than I could ever want to be. It is a dusty, pathetic little dirthole up in the Panhandle -- again, flat as a pancake for hundreds of miles around. Lends itself more to The Last Picture Show if anything. That porch scene must have been shot down in Big Bend country, far away close to the Mexican border. And the town is certainly NOT populated by zany colorful characters. And I'd be surprised if there was any sort of "secret gay nightclub" for all the local ranchhands who are secretly gay. I've heard that the good citizens of Happy were mighty upset at how the film came out.

Kickboxer (1989). I'm no Jean Claude Van Damme fan, but I watched it because I saw part of it being filmed. It was at least actually filmed in Thailand. But there's a scene where the two main characters drive "a couple of hours" out of Bangkok to some secret training camp. Based on the mountainous jungle scenery, I'd say they would have had to be driving all friggin' day to reach scenery like that, which was obviously up in the North. The Central region, which includes Bangkok, is as flat as West Texas, and it's all heavily agricultural. Plus they threw in this goofy Tarzan-jungle-sounding soundtrack. (BTW: The scene I watched being filmed was on Khao San Road. Van Damme goes into a "boxing gym," which is actually a Khao San Road Hotel, and comes out again. There are two small children in front on the sidewalk sparring with each other. I think he toussle's one's hair, then walks away. The scene inside the gym was filmed somewhere else. This part could go in the other thread.)

(BTW: The scene I watched being filmed was on Khao San Road. Van Damme goes into a "boxing gym," which is actually a Khao San Road Hotel, and comes out again. There are two small children in front on the sidewalk sparring with each other. I think he toussle's one's hair, then walks away. The scene inside the gym was filmed somewhere else. This part could go in the other thread.)

They do that in so many films. I was listening to the commentary on Shaun of the Dead and Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright pointed out that the scene in the backyard (where the gang is practicing their zombie impressions) was filmed in two different place. Towards the fence and neighboring house in one location and the opposite viewpoint was filmed 15 miles away.

Rumble in the Bronx was going to be my contribution because the mountains were so egregious. The only other ones I can think of off-hand are TV shows: Southern California standing in for almost anywhere:

This is too old for most Dopers even to care about, but the old Walt Disney productions (TV shows and feature movies) about Davy Crockett, especially when he was supposedly living in West Tennessee were filmed somewhere else because the mountains shown are closer in size to East Tennessee, but look much more like California or somewhere west of Tennessee. West Tennessee has some hills but there are no mountains in that part of the state.

Our family went camping at the Reelfoot Lake State Park (Northwest Tennessee near the Mississippi River and the Kentucky state line) when the kids were young and we took a boat tour of the lake to see all the flora and fauna of that earthquake-made natural wonder. The surrounding terrain was almost as flat as the lake and the tour guide pointed at a little rise on one shore and said in what sounded like a joking manner, "That rise there is the high point in this county." It was less than 30' higher than the lake.

Tennessee slopes downward from East to West and all the really high ground is East of Nashville. The western half (surely the western third which starts at the Tennessee River and goes to the Mississippi) is mostly the sort of terrain you find in Mississippi and Western Alabama.

Bottom line: Davy Crockett, as depicted by Walt Disney, is geographically in error.

Not a movie, but a television series that has now probably gone mostly forgotten, but the cop show Sirens was supposedly set in Washington DC. It was filmed in Montreal and featured blatant French signage as well as a shot of Boulevard René Levesque, complete with skyscrapers and a caption that read: Washington DC.

Part of the Charlie Sheen vehicle, The Arrival, is set in Oaxaca, Mexico. It is portrayed as a dirty, lawless place. Not far from the city, there is a jungle-like area. In fact, Oaxaca is one of the most beautiful cities in Mexico, a charming place littered with literally hundreds of ridiculously ornate colonial churches and sits in the middle of a generally arid area.

In The Deer Hunter, the main characters go hunting in the Appalachian mountains. Unfortunately, they apparently got lost along the way and ended up in Washington state.

There are some episodes of The X-Files just like that. Those huge mountains in Massachusetts bear an uncanny resemblance to the Pacific Northwest.

I was coming in to mention the X-Files... In one episode, Mulder and Scully go to Rachel, Nevada to investigate something. They pull up at a big house with a big green lawn and big trees. Rachel is high desert, no grass, no trees, and definitely no big houses. I don't even think they have buildings/houses there that didn't come with wheels.

I recently watched The Matrix which was filmed in Toronto but partly set in Chicago. I was amused that in all the high altitude helicopter shoots, the skyscraper rooftops and 70th story windows not a single glimpse of the giant fucking lake Chicago is on is visible.

True Grit had scenes supposedly in Yell County, Arkansas, but somehow failed to account for the lack of snowy, 12000 ft pointy-topped mountains. There's an 1800 foot flat-topped mountain that looms large to the west, but no peaks, and rarely is it snow-covered.

I recently watched The Matrix which was filmed in Toronto but partly set in Chicago. I was amused that in all the high altitude helicopter shoots, the skyscraper rooftops and 70th story windows not a single glimpse of the giant fucking lake Chicago is on is visible.

I didn't think the city was ever explicitly named in the movie - I think I'd give that one a pass on account that it was supposed to be an artificial construct, merely resembling a human city in the late 20th Century.

I recently watched The Matrix which was filmed in Toronto but partly set in Chicago. I was amused that in all the high altitude helicopter shoots, the skyscraper rooftops and 70th story windows not a single glimpse of the giant fucking lake Chicago is on is visible.

I'm going with Mangetout on this, since avoiding any shots of the lake would almost have to be on purpose, given that Toronto happens to own some prime shore-front property on a giant fucking lake* of its own....

*Hey, I live in a desert country. Lake Ontario looks pretty huge to me....

I didn't think the city was ever explicitly named in the movie - I think I'd give that one a pass on account that it was supposed to be an artificial construct, merely resembling a human city in the late 20th Century.

I assumed Chicago as well, based on the number of Chicago street names and (IIRC) L stops mentioned. It might have been just a tribute by the Wachowski brothers since they grew up in Chicago.

To be fair, I've never been to Toronto and the closest I've been to Chicago is playing Midtown Madness, so I don't really have any context that my brain is trying to fit it into. I can see how this might be different for movie viewers with real-world experience of those places.

I didn't think the city was ever explicitly named in the movie - I think I'd give that one a pass on account that it was supposed to be an artificial construct, merely resembling a human city in the late 20th Century.

No, they make it clear that it's Chicago. They don't specifically call it by name, but they use all the famous street names in the loop and the Subway train is labeled with "Loop". The trace in one of scenes is to a 312 area code and they show maps that are obviously of Chicago. Additionally the Wachowski's are from Chicago, which is probably notable.

Some Googling shows that the movie was filmed in Sydney, not Toronto, so no big fucking lake to speak of. What do you mean.... Ocean?!?

Of course you can easily apologize for the hole due to the fact that it's all a computer construct. However, they are specific that the Matrix is a simulation of late 20th century world so if you want to geek out you could make a case for the fact that it should be realistic in that detail.

Most of the backgrounds and skylines are 100% CGI in the movie so maybe they have even less of an excuse for the screw up than some of the old westerns shooting in California do. They did have the technology to fix it afterall.

No, they make it clear that it's Chicago. They don't specifically call it by name, but they use all the famous street names in the loop and the Subway train is labeled with "Loop". The trace in one of scenes is to a 312 area code and they show maps that are obviously of Chicago. Additionally the Wachowski's are from Chicago, which is probably notable.

Some Googling shows that the movie was filmed in Sydney, not Toronto, so no big fucking lake to speak of. What do you mean.... Ocean?!?

Of course you can easily apologize for the hole due to the fact that it's all a computer construct. However, they are specific that the Matrix is a simulation of late 20th century world so if you want to geek out you could make a case for the fact that it should be realistic in that detail.

Most of the backgrounds and skylines are 100% CGI in the movie so maybe they have even less of an excuse for the screw up than some of the old westerns shooting in California do. They did have the technology to fix it afterall.

Bear in mind that unlike New York or LA, only Chicagoans are in any way familiar with Chicago landmarks. To most people, the Matrix city was "Anycity U.S.A." It could have been Chicago, it could have been Detroit, it could have been Cleveland, it could have been Denver, it could have been St. Louis. I'm sure all those cities are clearly distinct from each other in many different ways, but to outsiders they all tend to look alike from a distance.

Parts of Sleepless in Seattle were, indeed, filmed in the Seattle area.

The "gone wrong" part was when they father and son took a row boat out.

If they had actually gone from where they started to where they arrived, they would have rowed over 20 miles in pretty dangerous waters.
They crossed Lake Union, went through the Ballard Locks, into Puget Sound in the shipping lane, then around Magnolia Bluff and up the beach to Alki.

Of course you can easily apologize for the hole due to the fact that it's all a computer construct. However, they are specific that the Matrix is a simulation of late 20th century world so if you want to geek out you could make a case for the fact that it should be realistic in that detail.

Yeah... but... they also make clear that nobody really knows how accurate it is.

Bear in mind that unlike New York or LA, only Chicagoans are in any way familiar with Chicago landmarks. To most people, the Matrix city was "Anycity U.S.A." It could have been Chicago, it could have been Detroit, it could have been Cleveland, it could have been Denver, it could have been St. Louis. I'm sure all those cities are clearly distinct from each other in many different ways, but to outsiders they all tend to look alike from a distance.

I don't know that I'd recognize LA. I think many Americans at least might recognize Chicago from the Sears Tower or the Hancock Building, but neither of those were featured, which is what made the Chicagoans go "wtf?" as to us it became obvious what city it was intended to be, but the majority of the scenery - obvious and unobvious - didn't match up.

They're all filmed in abandoned quarries. Are we to believe that every alien planet looks like it's been heavily mined?

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That always got me. Every alien planet is apparently the same the whole way around. So the planet is completely lush or completely desert or completely mined-quarry. Apparently only Earth can have more than one feature.

I recently watched The Matrix which was filmed in Toronto but partly set in Chicago. I was amused that in all the high altitude helicopter shoots, the skyscraper rooftops and 70th story windows not a single glimpse of the giant fucking lake Chicago is on is visible.

I was going to say The Matrix was filmed in Sydney, not Toronto- you can see things like the Commonwealth Bank logo in street scenes and there's also scenes of traffic driving on the left hand side of the road, as most of the British Commonwealth* does. Several of the buildings are clearly antipodean style, as well.

I didn't realise it was "supposed" to be set in Chicago- I thought it was Anywhere City, USA, c. 1999.

Peter Jackson's movie The Frighteners was filmed in Lyttelton, a suburb of Christchurch, NZ (and not far from the suburb I used to live in). However, the movie is set in a US city, and so you've got traffic driving on the right- despite the fact the visible road markings are clearly for driving on the left hand side of the road.

Tasmania was often shown in old Warner Bros. Cartoons as looking like a tropical South Pacific paradise with palm trees and sandy beaches and straw huts and what have you- totally unlike the real Tasmania, which is (by all accounts) cold, looks very much like NZ, and has modern buildings and conveniences like electricity and running water.

*Not Canada, though. Splitters!

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Note: Please consider yourself and/or your acquaintances excluded from any of the author's sweeping generalisations which you happen to disagree with or have different experiences of.

I recently watched The Matrix which was filmed in Toronto but partly set in Chicago. I was amused that in all the high altitude helicopter shoots, the skyscraper rooftops and 70th story windows not a single glimpse of the giant fucking lake Chicago is on is visible.

That's what they want you to believe. The real Chicago is in the desert. You took the wrong pill.

The old Wonder Woman TV series took place in Washington, at least during the first season. Note: No Washington street is lined with palm trees.

All three seasons were set in Washington, the first in the 1940s and the second and third in the 1970s. Still doesn't explain the palm trees, though (although a number of episodes were set on Paradise Island and Diana moved to Los Angeles at the end of season 3. God I'm a geek.).

For Love of the Game has a couple scenes supposedly set in the Detroit Tigers' spring training home of Lakeland, FL (where I live). The scenes had beaches and palm trees, like your typical gulf coast tourist town. Unfortunately for that scenario, Lakeland is 50 miles inland.

In The Russian Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming , after the Russian sub lands on Cape Cod, Massachusetts the crew members walk along the beach and in the not too distant distance are tall un-Massachusetts-like mountains.

Correct me if I'm wrong on this since it has been a while, but in Citizen Kane isn't his San Simeon substitute Xanadu supposed to be on the Gulf Coast in Florida? It wouldn't have taken a lot of work to learn that there are no mountains on any coast in Florida. The high point of the state is 345 feet.

The TV mini-series Maigret (starring Michael Gambon) was filmed in Budapest , standing in for 1950's Paris. In one scene you have Maigret and his wife strolling along the banks of the "Seine" (Danube). On the opposite bank you can see a range of tree-lined hills. This is something you will not see in Paris.

Groundhog Day. Set in Punxsutawney, PA but filmed in Woodstock, IL. Woodstock doesn't resemble Punxsutawney in the least. Biggest gaffe: "Gobblers Knob", the place where the groundhog makes his annual appearance is on a hilltop a mile or so outside of town. The movie presents it as being in the middle of town. In the movie, Punxsutawney is depicted as a looking rather prosperous with wide streets. In reality, it's pretty badly economically depressed_and has been so for decades_with one narrow main street and lots of vacant lots and empty storefronts. It also has a creek running through the middle of town and railroad tracks as well...as befits a town that exists in the first place because lumber and then coal were shipped from there. Oh, and Woodstock seems to be a pretty flat place whereas Punxsutawney is in the Appalachians and looks like it. Overall, it's like the producers of the movie deliberately sought out a small town that looks as much as possible unlike Punxsutawney.

I have just though of another one. In a film version of David Copperfield there is a shot of the sun setting over the sea in Yarmouth. A tad impossible that, as this particular town lies on the east coast of England.

Are TV shows okay? The US Queer as Folk is set in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is a very distinctive city. There are no freaking bridges in the show, and very few hills. The weird thing is, there's an episode where they go to New York, and they obviously bothered to leave Toronto or wherever and actually go to New York. I mean, it's clearly and recognizably New York. But they couldn't be bothered to even take establishing shots of Pittsburgh?

I have just though of another one. In a film version of David Copperfield there is a shot of the sun setting over the sea in Yarmouth. A tad impossible that, as this particular town lies on the east coast of England.

...Or the western end of the Isle of Wight.

Much of the story is set in Suffolk, which does suggest that the Yarmouth in question is Great Yarmouth, however, Dickens apparently wrote much of it while he was on the island - and there are (perhaps completely spurious) claims that it's the IOW Yarmouth in the book. Haven't read it myself, so maybe I'm also overlooking some really obvious reference pinning it to Great Yarmouth.

Much of the story is set in Suffolk, which does suggest that the Yarmouth in question is Great Yarmouth, however, Dickens apparently wrote much of it while he was on the island - and there are (perhaps completely spurious) claims that it's the IOW Yarmouth in the book. Haven't read it myself, so maybe I'm also overlooking some really obvious reference pinning it to Great Yarmouth.

As David travelled from Blunderston (definitely in Suffolk) to Yarmouth by Barkis's cart I doubt if they made the 240 mile journey to the IOW Yarmouth when Great Yarmouth is only ten miles away.

I mentioned The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, which was filmed in Springfield, Massachusetts. Peter goes on a hunt to find the statue of the Pilgrim that he keeps dreaming about. You think he would have noticed it when he came into the city on the road that runs right by it.

This is pretty minor. Stripes with Bill Murray was shot partially in Louisville, Ky. Early in the film they're in a taxi headed for the airport, crossing a bridge. The only bridges in Louisville take you to Indiana, not the airport, which is south of downtown.

There is a made-for-TV movie (c. 1988) starring Cheryl Ladd called Bluegrass and it was mostly filmed here, in the Bluegrass region of Central Kentucky. Amusingly, there is a scene in the beginning of the move where the Ladd character works on a horse farm in Arizona, or somewhere similar in the Southwest. These scenes, too, were filmed in Central Kentucky, at a horse farm whose house is indeed done in a Hacienda architectural style.

I've never seen Heaven's Gate but I've heard of it as one of Hollywood's most expensive disasters. Once in a compendium about turkey-films I saw that the opening scene shows the hero graduating from Harvard University -- but the scene was actually filmed at Oxford in the UK. Why? Harvard's still there, you know! Right there in Cambridge, MA! No, it doesn't look like a 19th-Century school any more, but there's all kinds of ways you could film it there with the old buildings as backdrop and block, screen or edit out all the cars, power lines, etc. Why spend a fortune on an overseas shoot?!

The movie The Silver Streak with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor was supposedly set in the American midwest, but was actually shot in Alberta. In one scene you can see the train going past a city which, if memory serves, was identified as Chicago. Only you could clearly see the Calgary Tower on the skyline.

In the movie, Punxsutawney is depicted as a looking rather prosperous with wide streets. In reality, it's pretty badly economically depressed_and has been so for decades_with one narrow main street and lots of vacant lots and empty storefronts. . . .